Upgrading to OJS 3.3.0-18 : various plugins problems

Greetings everyone,

While upgrading OJS from 3.3.0-16 to 3.3.0-18 on our staging server, I stumbled upon some weird errors I’ve never seen and that aren’t obviously covered in the forum.

For both this upgrade and the previous one, I proceeded with the compressed versions on PHP website (e.g. https://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/download/ojs-3.3.0-18.tar.gz).

First weird error, some plugins in my 3.3.0-16 were at a more recent version than the plugins that shipped with 3.3.0-18, which resulted in a “Downgrades are not supported” exception when running the upgrade. Never seen that. I fixed that one by simply swapping the directories for the plugins with a version problem.

But then, second weird error: when the upgrade process reaches the post-install stage, it throws this message:

2024-07-24 09:49:07 [post-install]
<h1>Trying to instantiate a &quot;metadata&quot; type description with an invalid type name &quot;APP\plugins\metadata\dc11\schema\Dc11Schema(ARTICLE)&quot;.</h1>ojs2: Trying to instantiate a "metadata" type description with an invalid type name "APP\plugins\metadata\dc11\schema\Dc11Schema(ARTICLE)".

The problem seems again to be related to a plugin. I could try and swap that directory too – but at this point, I fear I’ll just get another exception when running the upgrade. I’d rather understand the source of that plugin problem before further messing with the directory structure.

Any hint?

Hi @nicolasd,

What plugins did you see the downgrade message appearing for?

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

Hello @asmecher,

Thanks for the swift reply. The plugins were:

  • generic/acron
  • generic/recommendByAuthor
  • generic/orcidProfile
  • reports/reviewReport

Hi @nicolasd,

Just reviewing those:

  • generic/acron: In both 3.3.0-17 and 3.3.0-18, the version should be 1.2.0.0
  • generic/recommendByAuthor: In both 3.3.0-17 and 3.3.0-18, the version should be 1.0.0.0
  • generic/orcidProfile: In 3.3.0-17, it’s 1.1.3.12; in 3.3.0-18, it’s 1.1.3.14
  • reports/reviewReport: In both 3.3.0-17 and 3.3.0-18, it’s 2.0.0.0

The only one of these that’s released outside the OJS package is the ORCiD profile plugin, which is also available through the Plugin Gallery. The latest version for OJS 3.3.0-x there is 1.1.3.14, which is the same is comes with OJS 3.3.0-18.

Long story short, I’m not sure how you’d have ended up with higher versions in your installation than come with OJS 3.3.0-18; did you upgrade these manually or something? Did you maybe attempt an upgrade to OJS 3.4.0-x and back out without restoring the database?

Thanks,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

Good morning @asmecher,

Well, yeah, everything is off:

image

What puzzles me is that after every OJS upgrade, I go through a round of plugins upgrading – but through the UI, not manually. And I don’t even recall upgrading those plugins.

One of the instances on that server has indeed been upgraded to 3.4 several months ago, but not that instance. I have not recollection of doing it, and no sign of it in my documentation.

So I’m at a loss.

Givin the fact it’s a minor upgrade, would it be safe to just swap the entire plugin directory?

Hi @nicolasd,

I suppose swapping in the plugins directory should be OK, but it makes me wonder if other parts of the code might be mixed… Without any idea how things got that way, I’m not sure what to recommend.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

Hello @asmecher,

Time for a vigorous head slap.

I tried swapping the directory, furthermore sinking into problems – so I finally got fed up, rolled back the entire instance – and then I saw it had been upgraded to 3.4 after all, although I still have no memory of doing it.

That upgrade was just one too many ball to juggle.

Sorry to have wasted your time, and thanks a bunch for your insight.

Hi @nicolasd,

Not a problem, and I have been there many times myself!

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

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